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As the author suggests Federalism should contribute to a more stable Mid-East,however chaos is the natural state of affair after 1400 years in any civilizarion as Roman history will show.The Sunnis are the Romans of this Era and their western provinces are declining to be supplanted by the eastern Indo Iranians as happened with the rise of Rome's eastern Byzantium Empire.This shift in power is now in progress across the Islamic world and is the cause of the Sunni Shiite rivalry,unfortunately the spirit of tolerance and understanding that would have made this transition easy is nonexistent in the Mid-East

This is, to be kind, delusional. The problem is that non-state actors are being empowered to promote various violent ideologies and religious views, and the general means of doing this is by force, creating enemies and little else, except chaos. The only way to stop the nonsense is to stop the oil producing countries from funding it. Although that might be a first step, surely the second step is to stop the West from interfering in the affairs of these various Sunni states, even with what are perceived to be, and intended to be, good works. Gross civil collapse is the most likely outcome, but without that there will be no way forward. The people in those countries have to suffer under Islam, and suffer under Sharia law, to remove those ideas from the discourse, and move on to an alternative to the strong man type of "government" they now seem to have. All that intervention does is continue the status quo. And no, this upheaval is not likely to happen, so we are stuck with this mess for a long time.

Dear Mr. Chellaney, I am a regular reader of your columns and tweets. if you are talking about India or even Indonesia it makes sense to determine whether a federal approach will improve the lot of the people. But in the context of Sunni Islam as you have portrayed it, the raging problem is competing forms of extremism - ISIS, Al Quaeda, Pak and Afghan Taliban and Saudi driven Wahabism. In this mad-house can one expect anyone to sit down and think of federalism or anything like that? One needs a strong external force. The one country capable of playing that role the USA has unfortunately not covered itself with glory in the past. It is responsible for the Talibans in Af-Pak and for the Shia-Sunni conflict and rise of ISIS in Iraq. And its alliance with SA has meant tacit support to that country's export of Wahabi fundamentalism. Yet you have chosen to deal with US in one single innocuous line: " Even the US must reconsider its regional policy, which has long depended on alliances with despotic Sunni rulers." The US can afford today to rap SA on the knuckles having overtaken that country as the world's biggest oil producer. A strong suggestion to that effect is the least we expect from you.

I think Federalism could be a viable option but if flies in the face of three key determinants of Arab / Islamic socio-political structures:

1) the islamic mindset in the region is one reinforcing theistic dogma ie centralized control of authority.
2) current power structures are family (GCC states) or institutional fiefdoms (army in egypt) & hence any attempt at power moving to constituent political bodies will be seen as a weakening of the existing fiefdom.
3) the historical perspective for these countries does not highlight federalism as a successful model, so why try the unknown?

Perhaps everybody should be looking at the Shia (Iran) model; it has survived the test of time, its influence has grown over time & it stands as the only viable bulwark to Sunni extremism.

It was uggested by a commentator on this site that it is about time for foreign powers to stop interfering in the Middle East and let them resolve their own problems. The schism in Islam is unlikely to go away any time soon, so they need to fight their religious wars, similar to the 30 years war in Europe, theirs will be equally as brutal. The outcome is anyones guess, but with oil entering its final days it is unlikely that Royal Kingdoms wil survive far into the future.

Trying to solve the international problems without bleeding is not possible.
Religions are to blame for most of our troubles,togethwer with the greed.which apparently still reings today.If you want to solve these problems,one is the solution.Redistrbibute wealth equally to all hmunas.amnd lets start from scratch.close down multinational banks and the lot and return to primary production for food ,stop stealing oil and trading with criminals,etc etcetc...
as for religions just ban them.everywhere in the world....but since half of us ,are ignarant religious idiots,no solution can be applied.When we get more on the rational side we talk again.until them watch them cut heads with the prmission and the help of those who you pay to sel you oil ,to have electricity for your house...
we need to make sacrifices if we want to stop them.but noone wants top sacrifice shit.so...we will continue this situation of madness...
stop looking for solutions that do not exist.
it is the capitalism stupid !!1

Before we completely despair of the Middle East and the Middle East completely despairs of itself, the troubles faced by East Asia before the developed power, in those days the United States, opened the doors to real development to the Japan that became East Asia’s economic leader, should be remembered. Fortunately for East Asia, the 60s, so strongly associated by the US with Vietnam was also the decade that MacArthur’s genius and the ability of his colleagues and their colleagues, the Japanese manufacturing engineers showed their results in a tripling of Japanese incomes! East Asia had no trouble and following that leading goose!
I was introduced to General MacArthur's Civil Communications Section (CCS) and its engineers, Frank Polkinghorn, Charles Protzman, Homer Sarasohn and W.S. Magill by the famous Peter Drucker in 1968. They had been brought out to help rebuild Japan’s destroyed communications but even back in 1950, the year they left Japan, they were aware they had taken part in a remarkable partnership. When Harry Truman had pronounced his Point Four on Jan 20 1949 offering to share “our imponderable resources in technical knowledge (that) are constantly growing and are inexhaustible." adding, "we must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas “ they told me Truman’s words “rang down the dark corridors of“ MacArthur’s GHQ and they realized they carried technical knowhow as described by Truman that could set up the existing Japanese Electrical Communications Manufacturers to be competitive in world markets! For young Homer Sarasohn, then Head of CCS Industrial Division it was a moment he never forgot when MacArthur pointed the stem of his corn-cob at him and said, simply, “Go Do It!”
Fortunately for the world, these engineers from US Industry had been made US Civil Servants and as such had to document all their important actions and decisions. They kept the formal orders that followed which have now been made into a wonderful collection of official papers (and of personal photographs!) at the Drucker Institute in Claremont, California by Bridget Lawler, much already online. Politicians and Economists should be aware that while they may not have heard of the “CCS Engineers” they are very widely credited round the world in their profession as having played the role described in these paragraphs. And we know exactly what they did! “ As Bunzaemon Inoue, leading Sumitomo executive would write me, “CCS was the light that illuminated everything!”
Ken Hopper

Ken you miss an important point in the development of Japan (not rehabilitation) that America was in charge of defence, so when a country does not need to use resources to defend itself it can put all it's effort into rebuilding it's economy. Money is not missing in the Middle East but those who have it want to keep it.

If I am allowed to comment on my own post, I would like to suggest that countries of the developed world choose any Middle East nations that look as if they would welcome and be able to host the kind of postwar support and advice MacArthur’s Civil Communications Section (CCS) gave the companies that became the Japanese Consumer Electronics Industry. As an old P&G engineer, from the 1940s and 1950s, I am aware that P&G has been starting up new plants in Nigeria and South Africa. ATT provided the Japanese electrical communications industry with executives with at least that that level of experience as advisors.
Tunisia has had a very favorable press in recent months. Morocco seems to get along without experiencing the terrible troubles of its neighbors. Turkey and Egypt have been great white hopes and let us hope they become so again. The counselling could be given in any lines of business or technology. Alternatively, developing nations should take a lead in requesting such advice.
There is just one fact to remember: such ATT advisors as engineers, Frank Polkinghorn, Charles Protzman, Homer Sarasohn and W.S. Magill were not drop outs. They were executives with the kind of high level knowhow and contacts that American companies lent to others only reluctantly and only having an agreement (in Japan they were legally “seconded” to MacArthur for a limited period) that they will return. In their own companies, they are part of what the distinguished economic historian Al Chandler called “the Visible Hand”. As the 26 year old engineer responsible as Section Engineer for the start-up of P&G’s first independent Standard Tide Unit outside the US, I met the senior American and British engineers who carried the know-how that made my start-up possible. They subsequently setup such Units round the world.
Ken Hopper

Yemen First
Between Nasser 1954 to Saddat 1982 major changes happened to the radical Muslim orgs mainly:1- forming new relation between the radical org, the Wahabi sect, and Saudi opportunism which spawned intergovernmental region-wide terror, 2- the raise of radical thoughts of famous detained called Sayed Koteb whose work had very big impacts on radical's org's culture, and 3- after Arabs regime countered terrorist figures successfully and put them in jails, the task of theorizing and conceptualising Islam religion travelled from the Arab world to India and Pakistan, the problem is that scholars in these countries don't speak Arabic so they are in no position to be real scholars who are authorised to renew and revolutionise Islam teachings, and instructions, and introduce new theories and concept, BUT unfortunately this is what happened through a radical Indian-Pakistan scholar called Abu A'la Maududi who made Islam probably because of his lack of Arabic language very radical and terror motivated...

Major turning point was the Iran revolution: prior to this revolution the chances of radical Muslim org coming to power were very poor, and the concept of forming terrorist network was very dim... However the success of Ayotallah rule in Iran and the formation of Hezbala revitalised Radical orgs ambition to get to power "" which later happened in Algeria in the 1990s, and other examples "" ... And that's why Hamas terrorist org was formed in 1988 6 years after Hezbala terror network was founded in 1982...So Iran, and Hezbala gave the example for the Sunni radicals who thought getting in power is impossible, and having an active terrorist network is unobtainable... the 2nd effect of Iran Mulla revolution is the identity, introducing itself as Shia and leading its politics in the region accordingly created the need for a Sunni response to reaffirm its Sunni identity and that is why the radical Sunni orgs had alot of sympathisers in the Sunna community...

So unlike the popular impression that Iran encounter Sunna terror, the opposite is true... maybe operatively there are clashes between them but strategically Iran empowers terrorism unintentionally...

Let's remember that the Sunni community represents 85-90% of the Muslim population in the world, and they are scattered in an area that stretch from far east of Asia to the heart of Europe and beyond that...these simple facts may manifest why Sunni community is the bigger source of problems, because they are bigger and larger...

The problem with this whole thing about radical Islam can be tracked back to the breakup of Ottman Caliphate, eventhough the timing of such demise couldn't be better, since it brought the Arab world into the 20th century: the first decades of the 20th century is characterized by the breakup of old empires, like the fall of Manchu dynasty in such backward country like china, the breakup of the Tsarist rule if Romanov family in Russia, the end of the last branch of the house of Habsburg and later the etc etc... But unfortunately the breakup of Ottman family was different, unlike the above examples where the masses had chosen freedom to overthrow the old regimes, the Ottman empire chosen to throw its Muslim masses away and join Europe so Muslims were unprepared, shocked, and helpless and consequently more vulnerable to external forces shaping their lives fron Lawrence to sykes picot to such eminent figure as Ben Gerion... This is why Muslims, Arabs, and Sunni in particular "" since Ottomans represented Sunni rule "" fell in illusion of restoring Caliphate and that was the first ground for the clash between " the nation state " and " radical Islam " that tries to undo nation-state era... unfortunately this new radical Muslim org believed in conspiracy theory and didn't realize that the breakup of Ottman rule just put them in the right direction in the heart of 20th century...

Luckily not all Arabs were disrupted and confused... Egypt provided an example of The Nation State and took on the radical interpret of Islam... rad

It's disheartening to see a learned scholar propose such a generalized solution. Is Pakistan not a federal state? Is it not on the cusp of or already a failed state? While the author does make a small nod to tribal and ethnic conflicts being a source of tension in Sunni states, an overarching claim that federalism is the silver bullet to stability is a lazy analysis at best.

The Sunni arc is the hotbed of extremism and international terrorism. As the article points out, it boasts a number of failed or failing states. It also has several states that are de facto partitioned. The article shies away from saying this but these developments mean that, for the foreseeable future, the Sunni arc will remain the springboard of international terror. The author recommends federalism to stabilize the Sunni countries. But will federalism eliminate the scourge of international terrorism that emanates from this region?

Apparently Salafism can not to be conflated with Wahhabism. The "Sunni arc" may be something only Chellaney can see. It's true that the ultra-conservative Wahhabi branch of Islam was to blame for the 9/11 attacks on US soil and seen as the ideology of Islamic extremists.
A 18th century sect, Wahhabism was founded by the Arabian scholar Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. A fundamentalist form of Islam, it sought to purify the religion by reuturning to its original principles and the texts of the Koran. Salafism had been practised by traditionally inward-looking adherents, loyal to the political establishment. Despite extremist views, they also tend to hold pragmatic political positions.
The Arab Spring saw an ideological shakeup within Salafism, during which followers became radicalised and politicised. Jihadists are heavily influenced by Salafism. Under the guidance of political Islam they want to fill the vacuum left after the fall of autocratic regimes and insist on imposing their binary world-view of believers and non-believers, strict social rules and Sharia law. Their use of violence has alienated and the Muslim world and eroded the traditional Salafism.
Although clerics across the Middle East have been hesitant to condemn the atrocities by ISIS, governments across the region show no tolerance and take on the jihadists. King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia had on TV scolded the hardliners and scholars for their "silence and laziness" in speaking out against ISIS.
As an Indian, Chellaney mentions the 2008 Mumbai attack, which was carried out by the Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba, a terrorist group, known for fighting against Indian control in Kashmir and launching deadly attacks in India. Although members embrace hardline views on Islam, Laskhar had no involvement in sectarian attacks in Pakistan. Its leaders were often critical of other militant groups operating in Kashmir and Afghanistan who also took part in the sectarian attacks against Shiites in Pakistan.
It's true that the 21st Century terrorism has hijacked ancient teachings of Islam. If Chellaney sees the "Sunni arc" as "vicious cycle of expanding extremism, rapid population growth, rising unemployment, worsening water shortages, and popular discontent," he harbours Islamophobia.﻿

LeT is mentioned in the context of being transnational sunni terrorist org. Most of its members are Pakistani sunnis and victims are Indians. So I don't really see what you are objecting to there. LeT isn't being mentioned as the author is Indian. It is being mentioned because of the Mumbai attacks.
Calling the author names and questioning his motives based on his origins is uncalled for and immature. I don't see any counter arguments - just that the author is incorrect and therefore he is a "Indian islamphobe".